Nicola Sturgeon's attacks on the Tories and 'Westminster' may be predictable, but she knows how to pitch her message to Labour's core vote

Easily the best of the SNP's speakers, Nicola Sturgeon yesterday banished any doubts her party faithful may have had about recent poor poll figures and a barrage of criticism from all sides of the Unionist camp with a bravura performance in Aberdeen.

At her party's last conference before the referendum, the Deputy First Minister didn't just demand independence in her speech, she virtually ordered the voters to deliver it. After all, it was for their own good, she insisted.

Ms Sturgeon's main pitch was to a not unfamiliar section of the electorate – Labour voters in Central Scotland, but if I detected a note of desperation in her appeal, then I'm sure my nationalist friends will insist that it was all a figment of my imagination.

She had some fun at the expense of Lord Robertson, the former Nato secretary general, for his daft claim that an independent Scotland would be "cataclysmic" for the security of the West; I knew what he meant but he needs to choose his words more carefully. But it is castigation of the Tories that comes most naturally to Ms Sturgeon and she tore into their record over welfare, over unemployment and over Trident. And there is little doubt that her words yesterday will chime with some Labour supporters, as they have already.

But her attempt to make "Westminster" the evil villain of the piece wore especially thin in relation to what she said was its refusal to allow an independent Scotland to retain sterling in a currency union.

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"As long as we stay with Westminster, they will allow us to benefit. But if we vote Yes they will decide what we are entitled to," she said.

But what she ignores is that it is not Westminster as an institution – a pile of stones and mortar – that will decide who gets the pound but the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Are they not entitled to a say in who shares their currency?

And why would they risk their economy by allowing a foreign country to share the pound? Ask the Germans if they're happy that Greece got a share of what became their currency – the euro.

There will be Labour voters who will warm to her attacks on the welfare cuts imposed by the Coalition, cuts that have contributed, she said, to the spread of food banks throughout Scotland. But although she was scathing about what she said was the Tory attitude to those they called "scroungers", she gave the game away somewhat when she said that she wanted a welfare state "that gives people a hand up and provides a safety net for the times when life knocks us down".

Exactly. A safety net, just as Beveridge envisaged, not a way of life.

She made much, too, of her personal success story, thanks to working – and working class – parents who supported her through school, university and qualification as a lawyer during what she called "the darkest days of Thatcherism."

It's a cheap shot, I know, but it was her party that helped usher in what she insists were those "dark days" by voting down the Callaghan Labour government. I was there. I saw them do it.

And whilst it may be an admirable objective for her to say that she wants every child to have the same chances she did, it is simply not possible for everyone to become Deputy First Minister on a huge six-figure-plus salary. That's taking even Sturgeon socialism a bit too far.

Still, these serious shortcomings apart, Nicola Sturgeon is the SNP's most formidable operator thanks in particular to her ability to home in on those issues that most perplex Labour voters.

She has appeal where Alex Salmond hasn't and never will have. Oh yes, and she can also make a very good speech.